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This paper describes the development of political science as an academic discipline in post-war France. In just a few years, Sciences Po, a professional school rather than a research institution, established by Executive Order in 1945 in order to “promote research”, has offered academic programmes and degrees, founded an academic journal and a professional association, and created several research centres in political science. The post-war French academic context accounts for Sciences Po’s disciplinary investment, backed by the US philanthropic foundations which provided money, scientific recognition, and epistemic models. Focusing on empirical methods and on the study of politics, the academic discipline has been caught between contradictory demands: scientific autonomy vs. social and political demands for expert knowledge in a post-war context of staterebuilding and economic and social modernization